Next time you go shopping, leave your non-perishibles in the trunk and bring them to work with you on Monday and store "your foods" for work at work. You can go back to buying those fiber bars. For frozen or refrigerated foods, if you can make a lunchtime run, do that. As a general rule, I leave certain foods at work (jar of peanut butter, granola or kashi bars, glucerna diabetic shake, progresso soups, raisins) and in the frige skim milk and a couple frozen meals. That's one answer.
I question, however, that living together for this time and him being unemployed for so long, is that grating on your nerves? Maybe you want to revisit your situation.
Not speaking from experience, but I work with a gal who put herself through college and went back while working at our place and got her masters degree, while her BF of 5 years has been unemployed for the past 3. She pays the bills, cleans the house, does most of the cooking, walks the dogs. She called me one night at 10 p.m. while walking the dogs...because he wouldn't. They don't live in a great area, and I was very disappointed in him, and that she would take his crap. So, you may be reaching a point where you want to reevaluate your relationship--cuz maybe its more than him arguing about food and calling you an ahole.
NO! You are not crazy to want healthy boundaries, good manners, and some respect in your relationship!
I'm getting the impression that there's a lot of mind games from reading your post and you yourself are doubting your own thoughts and having to check with other people. That he has a habit of side tracking and blame shifting it on to YOU whenever something has to be sorted out. Then you don't know yourself if your complaint is valid any more or not.
And while you go around muddled, then he's off the hook, huh?
Look -- I don't know him, but cruise thru the link below and see if you have any other red flags. You do not have to share them here in public. But you have enough in your post that made me think "Uh oh. If it were me I'd be checking the list for more red flags!"
Love is a gift. It should not be used as a weapon. Anyone pulling the "If you REALLY loved me you would..." is being manipulative with your gift. Red flag.
He doesn't want to talk about his failing basic good manners is a red flag. He's a BF. His consideration and good manners for you ought to be even BETTER than a basic roomate because you are in love, right? So how come he's a food gobbling bad roomie who hogs everything?
And trying to make YOU responsible for how he feels rather than HIM being responsible for HIS actions? You are supposed to make the whole world agreeable for him so he never has to feel yucky? How's that supposed to make YOU feel?
And that still doesn't answer the original question. Now that you have expressed a reasonable need (to share our food evenly so I can eat too) -- what's he going to do about his behavior to address it?
I hope this is a temporary unbalance and with a good talk and some conflict resolution you can get back on track and play more like a team. Being jobless is stressy and can be depressing and makes people act out of character temporarily if they are frustrated.
But if this is chronic, and it is typically always a skewed relationship in his favor with you doing most of the work emotionally, mentally, financially, etc... it might be more like his true colors coming out. Then you have some hard thinking to do.
I'm very sorry you are experiencing this.
But yeah, you are NOT being unreasonable. And you do have some red flags there.
My husband and I have similar taste in food, so we never quibble about whose food it is. We usually split leftovers if there is enough for the both of us. If there is enough only for one person, we'd call and make sure that the other person was not planning on eating it when they got home. If we did accidentally eat something that the other person was looking forward to, we apologize and promise to replace it instead of calling the other person an a**hole.
I just want to know if there is a reason why he can't find a job. Tell him to get off his a$$ and help out. He seems to be free loading and you're not his mom. Then he can eat whatever he wants.
About the juice: I have done this to my husband recently. We cooked some venison that we we got as a gift one night for dinner and we each had some and there were lots of leftovers. I had a bit of the leftovers each of the next few days until there was only about one serving left, at which point my husband complained that I had eaten all of the venison. I honestly didn't know that he hadn't had any as well, since we hadn't been eating together and I didn't remember how much we had started with. Here's how we solved the problem: He asked me to check with him before I eat more than half of a "special" type of food that we have cooked. And the next time the situation came up I did ask him and he okay'd me to eat more than my half.
Here's the point: Communicate. Give your boyfriend a chance to respect your grocery boundaries by clearly delineating them for him before you get into an argument about it, at which point everyone is defensive and whatnot and it's very difficult to solve things. Don't get super mad about this until you've made your expectations clear.
Obviously the unemployment thing is a major source of tension. It's hard on you and it's hard on him. I listen to a lot of coverage on the economy and job market and such and I've heard losing a job compared with a death in the family several times. It's boiling over into all these other areas but you know it is the root issue. I don't really have any advice because I haven't been through something similar.
Just to add to the discussion - everything I go shopping, I do ask what he wants and I buy his "special" stuff, and I bring him with me, ask "Is there anything else you want?" and then I go buy my own stuff - and he will eat his stuff AND my stuff unless "my" stuff is something he doesn't like.
As far as helping around the house issues, he will do things if I ask him to (usually) but he will generally not do it on his own initiative unless it is to take care of the cats.
The resentment has been a HUGE issue for a while now and we've been pretty open about it, but it generally ends up with him being upset because I "make him feel bad" and "he would never make ME feel bad if the roles were reversed"... He *just* got into school after a few years to try to get a job hopefully and ease the load. The plan is that after his 18 week program is up and he gets a job, I can start working part time and take a break.
shishkeberry - true, we are not married and this is not how I plan on spending the rest of my life, but he has been unable to find work and is going to school a couple days a week in the morning to try to make himself more marketable in the future.
Being unable to find a job does not excuse how he treats you. The biggest issue seems to be his lack of respect and appreciation for you. You deserve to be treated with respect. The way he speaks to you when these things come up is inexcusable. I think that is what you should realize...you deserve to be treated with more respect and courtesy. He should make an effort to listen to what you need and work with you, not against you. Since he is not working, he should be making every attempt to help you stretch the money you bring in...that includes eating less, making sure you get your share of things, so you don't waste money buying more and more.
He just seems so selfish, which is not how most men out of work are to their spouses/girlfriends supporting them.
Hmmm...after reading your post let me start by summing up what i hear you are saying in your original post:
> You resent your boyfriend for getting to sit around while you work hard all day at your job
> You resent your boyfriend because you feel that its not fair that you have to pay all the bills and he doesnt have to pay for anything
> You feel frustrated because he doesnt understand where your coming from in terms of how you feel regarding him drinking your "special" juices that you bought for yourself.
> You feel angry, because he doesnt listen to you or recognize your needs
>You feel angry, because you dont feel like he validates how you feel
>You dont feel respected or appreciated for the hard work you do to pay all the bills and to keep things running.
>You feel like it isnt a fair situation. You feel that you understand is situation in terms of school, and yet he doesnt understand your desire to have what you need in the house for when you need it and in turn this causes you to feel like he just doesnt care.
This what i hear you saying. You are allowed to have those feelings. This is me validating your feelings, because it is apparent to me, that you needed validation from him and you did not recieve it, and so you came here online to this forum looking for it. So i am telling you right now: Its okay. I understand how you feel. You are not wrong to feel angry or frustrated. You are allowed to feel like there is no respect concerning your boundaries or personal space. You are allowed to feel like there is no fairness in this circumstance and you are allowed to feel exhausted and emotionally drained because it feels like everything is on your shoulders right now. You are allowed!
Now that i have said that: Lets look at the situation and some possible soloutions or ideas that can help.
1) His claim to you that "you" make Him feel no good and that its all his fault ect..is not actually the root of the problem. You hear him blaming you for his feeling like this, and while i cant say what you have or have not said cause i wasnt there. Do you think there is a possibility that perhaps you said something to him(that maybe even sounded harmless) that might have caused him to feel like a failure or like he isnt good enough? I want you to understand that even if you did say something that was a little hurtful, the root of his unhappiness is NOT you causing him to feel that way. It is more than likely, that he already felt like a failure or didnt feel good enough, before you ever came along and said anything to him. When a man has no purpose, when a man cant provide, when he has no job, when he is powerless. He does not feel like a man. See, it is naturally born into men to be the sole provider, to go out and hunt and kill and bring back the meat. For a man, it is a challenge to conquor. Do you think that him having no job makes him feel very good? Men like adventure and they live to have an adventure but when a man is powerless, and worse, when a man realizes that he is depending on a women(whom he should be providing for)..it causes him to feel weak. His pride is hurt, and a sense of defeat and failure comes in. So please, do not think that you have caused him to feel this way..he already did.
2) Resentment is a nasty thing. Did you know that if you allow that if you harbour resentment in your heart to someone, that it will continue to grow into a full blown hatred if not dealt with? Did you also know that resentment if not dealt with can produce physical symptoms? Resentment and anger, do nothing for your beauty or health. It just makes you angrier and unhappier and it puts a dividing wall between yourself and the person you love, so you need to deal with this. How? You need to come to the conclusion within yourself, that its time to let the anger go. If this means you must scream and shout and punch things( i said things not people), then do it. If you need to start going to the gym and running on a treadmill until you no longer have the energy , than do it. If you need to journal how you feel, do it. The point is: it needs to get out of you. Once it is out, you need to surrender to the fact, that at this very moment in time, you do not have control over your boyfriends lack of job. You do not have control over his lack of finances. See, we often resent that which we can not control. So, you need to make a decision: You choose to let it go and love this boyfriend, no matter how imperfect he is. You can love him in the circumstances you are in and choose to accept that this is how it is currently and it may be like this for awhile. Or..you can choose to try and control the situation by putting stipulations on your relationship such as "if you dont get a job I will do...." or "get a job or else". If you choose that route, be aware that you may put your entire relationship on the line. Is this a battle you really want to fight that way?
3) Did you know that life isnt fair? Did you know that regardless of what situation we are in, in life. The world does not owe us anything. If we go around with the attitud that someone owes us, we will never be satisfied. We will never be happy. In fact, we will feel incomplete because we will never feel that "this is good enough" or "that is good enough". Please understand what im saying here. Im not saying that its not okay for you to feel like its unfair. You are always entitled to your own feelings. However, feeling it and living it are two seperate things. Again, if you want to be happy in your relationship, you need to let go of this fairness issue.
I recognize that you are not married but you have been living together as if you were. Now, in my own personal relationship with my fiancee of 2.5 years, we have agreed, that my money is his money, his money is my money. We share everything. However, he has the job that pays the most and in turn is responsible for all the bills. If i had the highest paying job, it would be my responsibility to pay the bills. It doesnt mean that because i dont pay bills, that i can just keep all the money i make for myself. When he wants something, i buy it for him. When we go out to dinner, i pay most of the time. When we go out on vacation i pay. Why? Because he has the bills and the household payments. My money in my account is extra spending money we can use to have fun with. We have a budget we agree on. We spend 200$ a week on groceries and we go shopping together for them. Once the 200$ is spent, thats it. There is no extra things. That means, if he chooses to drink all the pop in our house, then its gone. If i choose to eat all the pie, its gone.
You need to sit down with your partner and go through your budget with him. You can give him spending money for stuff that he wants and you can have money for your groceries. Explain to him that if he continues to eat all of your stuff, you will either a) be forced to lock it up or b) will not provide anything that he wants anymore. It will be your sole decision
He needs to learn to respect your boundaries and you need to learn how to hold your ground. If this means sitting down and writing out a list of things that you need him to respect and him needing to do the same, then do it. Talk together rationally about it. Discuss how you feel and never start the conversation by saying "you did this or you did that". You need to start with I feel... because this is about how you feel..
Last but not least: if you can not agree to work this out,then i suggest counselling. If he does not agree to counselling, then maybe its time to think about where your relationship is headed.
Oh and one other note: I understand that you are feeling drained over your circumstances right now, but any support and encouragement you can give to him would help, remember..he doesnt feel like "the man" right now..so it would help your relationship alot if you took time to encourage each other through something as simple as saying "you know hunny, i know your not perfect, but i love you" or "i see your trying really hard in your program, im proud" or " i love it when you do the laundry for me it really helps me out".. Positive enforcement enforces positive behaviour.
Just a question, but are you actually telling him explicitly which foods are for you alone as soon as you bring them home? And what happens when he does the shopping, which I'm assuming he does about half the time? Do you tell him to buy things specifically for you, and mention that you're the only one who will be eating them as they're expensive diet foods? Does he go into the shop with a set budget and a list of things to buy?
Because if none of this is happening, then he's just having food provided for him, eating what is sitting around, and then suddenly being told that he wasn't allowed to eat some of it, had been expected to know that through mind-reading, and in fact is being resented for not being the one who paid for the food in the first place. Asking him what his "special foods" are when you do the shopping does not magically convey the information that some of the other foods you bought are off-limits. You're not doing all that, I hope? It did sound a bit as if you were, and furthermore as if you were grabbing the fruit juice out of his hand when he was simply trying to have a drink with his dinner, but I'm sure there's plenty you've left out.
I can see why you're both frustrated, it's a hard situation (and for anyone making snide remarks about how he should be able to get a job instantly, try looking at the current economic situation - although I do agree that several years of unemployment suggests that he is turning down the more basic jobs), and if either or both of you has been expecting the other one to mindread (a common problem) then it will be a lot harder. You need to have some good conversations about these issues until you have worked them out. Probably not when you're premenstrual. If you end up talking about it anyway when your behaviour is being markedly affected by your hormones, then for heaven's sake make sure you tell him that you're premenstrual and overreacting to stuff. You'll still be weepy/snappy/whatever, but it makes it much easier to get through it, trust me.
Oops, I just realised that my last post sounded as if I was heaping all the blame on you. I'm really not, he's being something of an insensitive twit here. But everyone else had already analysed that side of things, so I thought I'd explore another side, and did so rather one-sidedly. It honestly sounds like it's both of you bouncing off each other due to stress and poor communication, and I think that happens to everyone sooner or later. If it's any consolation, my partner and I have to deal with some similar issues as I am stuck in the house unable to work due to disability, and he has a very stressful job, and it really does weird things to the power balance and so forth. We're much better at dealing with it these days, but it's been pretty hard work at times. We usually end up leaving problem issues until we're both really upset about them, preferably when I'm seriously premenstrual as well (I get PMDD, the nasty end of the spectrum), which means that our Big Discussions almost invariably start late at night and involve me crying a lot. Ever heard the saying that PMS is when you cry because you can't get your shoes on?!
Being unable to find a job doesn't give him the right to be a snide jerk. Any normal BF would have apologized and asked how he could make it up to the OP. They would not have called the OP an *******. Also, if he was really feeling bad about being out of work, he'd be doing whatever he could to keep house while OP is at work. She said she has to ask him to do anything. Sounds like a lazy mooch to me, and a jerk to boot.
No, you're not being crazy. If he can't respect your boundaries in the fridge and uses passive aggressive guilt tripping as a defense when you confront him about it, that's just sad and pathetic on his part. Kudos to you for putting up with that - I wouldn't.
I had the exact same problem with my first roommate in college. We were sharing food and he was paying a bit more of the bills than me (we were splitting 40% for me, 60% for him, because he was eating just so much more than me) but he would always finish the good stuff... And it was driving me NUTS!
One of the time, I got really frustrated, because I would always buy hummus and spinach dip when I was going to the grocery (kinda expensive for the quantity). He was NEVER buying any. I was always wondering how the hummus was getting empty after like 2 days until that time when I walk in the kitchen and saw him putting TWO freakin tablespoon of hummus on a single tiny crackers.
I went like ''can you juste save it a bit and not eat so much of the hummus like that!??''
His answer was : ''I'm paying more than you, get lost''.
******* idiot :|
We stopped sharing groceries lol.
But with a boyfriend, it might be harder... Hope you find a solution! xxx
He's being disrespectful. It doesn't matter that you work and he doesn't, if he did all the working what he said would still be just as stupid. You shouldn't have to rush and eat your food before he eats it. Maybe he didn't understand that you wanted those for yourself because their foods you use for dieting, but if that was the case he should have appologized when you asked him not to drink them all. Stand up for yourself and tell him that he can get what food he wants, but he shouldn't touch the things that you get just for yourself, like diet foods. If he wants some as well he should speak up, but not devour yours because he eats anything in sight. He's not 12, he knows better and should respect that not everything is his just because he wants it to be.
If it was me, I would stop bringing a lot of the food home.
I would supply just the very basics for him. Flour, yeast, oatmeal, sugar, salt, pepper, dried beans, shortening, dry milk, potato flakes. And the cheapest hot dogs you can find.
For beverages...Kool-Aid packets. For bread, get a breadmaker...and if he wants bread...he can make it.
Disconnect the cable TV.
Spend the money you save on a gym membership. And save for a singles cruise once a year. Go by yourself. Go out with your friends by yourself.
If he wants to tag along, let him pay his own way.
Tell him you are on an austerity program. You are living your own life from now on. If he wants more at home, he will have to supply the money for the extras.
It's just too expensive to feed and house a mooch. Your mom and dad did not spend a lot of time and money raising you just to be taken advantage of by a free loader.
He has a family. They can take care of him. If not, there are homeless shelters. It looks like he is in dependency mode and likes his set-up just fine. There are always a lot of guys going from house to house looking for a lonely woman to take care of all their needs. They are now using the bad economy as an excuse to cover up their free-loading.
I have had a few sad sacks try to run a hard luck story over me in the past.
They are looking for a set-up. A place to free-load. I walk away from the mooches. I wouldn't give any of them the time of day. Some of them can be real flattering and turn on the charm. YUK.
A single friend of mine has also run into guys that are on the take. They'll take a lonely woman for anything they can get.
My neighbor recently divorced her husband after he lost his job.
She has a very good job with the school system and has 4 teenagers.
He would not contribute anything at home for months. He refused to cook, clean, or do the laundry. He sat around all day playing video games. He became ungrateful and hostile. He became abusive and started fights. The police were there every other day.
A really big problem for her and the police. He is gone now.
My cousin just booted out a free-loader. He went directly back to his ex-wife and is mooching off her now. That won't last long.
Another friend of mine has a good job and lives with a free-loader. He is a drunk. Has DUI'S.
BUT...
He does all the cooking, laundry and cleaning, and yard work. The place is spotless. He is clean. He is a gourmet cook. The only problem. When he drinks, he gets to throwing things around. The police are called. He does pick up odd jobs to help out. He is not a dependable worker. He just can't make it on his own.
She puts up with him. He is well liked, but still has problems she feels she can live with. He happily takes care of everything at home. She doesn't have to do much at all.
Best of luck to you. I hope you are not dealing with a dead-end situation like the few I have seen.
You can't change what you don't acknowledge.
~ Dr Phil McGraw ~
